Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declared victory over Islamic State on Dec. 9, 2017. And while there will still be some fighting, the real war is over. Yet there were no parades, no statues pulled down, no "Mission Accomplished" moments. An event that might a few years ago have set American front pages atwitter wasn't even worth a presidential tweet.

That's because in Washington there is little to celebrate. The next big milestone for Iraq will be the elections expected to take place in May. The contours of Iraq post-Islamic State are becoming clearer. Less clear is whether the strategy to defeat IS was successful and whether the American wars in Iraq are finally over.

What stands out now is the conspicuous absence of American influence. The two main election candidates are current Prime Minister Abadi, and former Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. Both come from the same Shi'ite Dawa party, and both have close ties to Iran. The names should be familiar. Maliki was the Great American Hope in 2006, and again in 2010, to unite Iraq across Sunni-Shi'ite-Kurdish lines as the bulk of American occupation forces withdrew. Abadi was the Great American Hope in 2014 to do the same as American troops flowed back to Iraq to fight Islamic State.

Abadi, a Shi’ite backed by a group close to Iran, says he is running as the head of a cross-sectarian bloc. He took over from Maliki, also a close ally of Iran widely blamed by Iraqi politicians for the army’s failure to prevent Islamic State seizing a third of Iraq.

Kuwait’s Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Khaled Al-Jarallah, has confirmed that Iraq has resumed its compensation payments in respect of the 1990 invasion. He noted that Baghdad made the move a month ago.

Al-Jarallah pointed out that Iraq would be paying the compensation due to Kuwait in cash, after backing down from the agreement to pay it in kind, with Iraqi gas. He added that payments would continue until 2021.​With regards to property belonging to Kuwaitis held in Iraq, the official stressed that it is all there and preserved. He said that he is communicating with Iraq regarding the restoration of the property to Kuwaiti citizens.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi dreams of securing a second term in office, but will have to joust with his predecessor Nouri Al-Maliki for the job. What binds both men is more their unyielding faith and membership of the Shia Islamic Dawa Party, rather than the fact that each has served as head of Iraq’s government.

Al-Abadi has served the party since the late sixties, climbing through the ranks until the party’s objectionable return made possible by America’s invasion of Iraq in 2003. The question of why the two men are embarking upon separate journeys toward the same destination has so far been dodged.

The fact that the Dawa Party stood down from the electoral race suggests tacit approval of the ensuing duel between the two. The scorn that Abadi’s appointment back in 2014 stirred in Maliki has only swelled as he looks set to do whatever it takes to regain his former title. What is certain is that Maliki can rely unreservedly on the Dawa Party’s rank and file, his political lifeblood.

Abadi’s efforts to placate members and provide concessionary returns has cost him greater support, and his pandering to militias raised by Maliki has cost him what meagre support he had left. This is not a race between two democratic candidates but a test of Dawa Party loyalty, as a final showdown to elect one power.

The British-backed monarchical regime of King Faisal and Prime Minister Nuri El Said was overthrown in an Arab nationalist revolution on 14 July 1958, which established a republic under Brigadier Abdul Karim Qasim. Said and the royal family were killed and the British embassy, long known to be the power behind the throne, was sacked by a mob with the loss of one British life.

British embassy officials described it as ‘popular revolution’ based on ‘pent-up passions of hatred and frustration, nourished on unsatisfied nationalist emotion, hostility to autocratic government, resentment at Western predominance, disgust at unrelieved poverty’.

The regime Britain had supported for so long was one of the most unpopular in the history of the Middle East. The British were well aware of its repressive features. A Foreign Office brief noted, for example, that ‘wealth and power have remained concentrated in the hands of a few rich landowners and tribal sheikhs centred round [sic] the Court’.​Three months before the revolution, Sir Michael Wright, Britain’s ambassador in Baghdad, told Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd that ‘the constitutional position in Iraq is very like what it was in the United Kingdom at the accession of George III’.

In some quarters, Iraq’s Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has been billed as Washington’s man in Baghdad: an Iraqi nationalist who can reconcile Iraq’s ethnic and religious communities after victories against ISIS; a prime minister that the United States can work with to counter Iran’s influence in the country; a leader who represents a welcome change from the authoritarianism and sectarianism of controversial former prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki.

Al-Abadi, a senior member of Iraq’s ruling Shiite political class and the ruling Islamic Dawa Party, also looked like he might be able to remedy relations with the Arab world after a series of overtures to key U.S. allies in the Gulf, who are concerned by Iran’s dominance in Iraq.

​Such was Washington’s belief in al-Abadi that the United States even acquiesced to his controversial military offensive into Kirkuk against the Kurds in October 2017, which involved a combination of Iraqi security forces and Iran-aligned militia groups. It came at great cost for U.S.-Kurdish ties (the idea being that a strong, nationalist al-Abadi could appeal to the electorate and sideline Iran’s proxies).

But such beliefs were met with a new reality on Monday, as were (unrealistic) hopes that al-Abadi could rebuild Iraq and bring the country together: His coalition announced that he will join forces with Iran-aligned militias that spear the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), the umbrella Shiite militia organization established in 2014 to fill the vacuum that was left by the collapse of Iraq’s armed forces when ISIS seized Mosul.

Students and educators in Nineveh Plains, Iraq, back where they belong: in the classroom

After three years of conflict, hundreds of students in the Nineveh Plains return to their classrooms, eager to pick up where they left off.

Schools are back in session in Hamdaniyah, Nimrud, and other communities across the Nineveh Plains of Iraq, only weeks after these areas were recaptured from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). Damaged classrooms at 20 schools have come back to life, opening their doors to hundreds of students keen on continuing their learning.

Through UNDP’s Funding Facility for Stabilization, the rehabilitation of more than a dozen more schools is underway. After three years of disruption under ISIL, reclaiming learning spaces in Hamdaniyah and Nimrud sends a messages of hope to students as they get on with what they used to do — reading, writing, answering questions, and having fun in the classroom.

Al Thibyania Primary School in Nimrud suffered great damaged during ISIL occupation and has since been renovated with the help of UNDP’s Funding Facility for Stabilization. “We are very happy they provided us these renovations,” said Saad Nahidh Hamedy, Principal of the Al Thibyania Primary School in Nimrud. “On behalf of the other teachers we say thank you very much.”

‘Fence mending’ emerged as a popular term in press circles shortly after news of Iraq and America’s so-called ‘landmark’ visit to the Saudi Kingdom hit the headlines. Since its announcement, online communities, Arabic and English speaking, dizzied by conflicting facts, questioned the notion that heads of state, or adversaries as the press described them, united, in the hope of cooling relations.

​Hearty handshakes and propitious claims aside, Iraqi premier Haidar al Abadi was called in for briefing. Behind closed doors, US secretary of State Rex Tillerson warned that should Abadi and Popular Mobilization Unit (PMU) affiliated and Iranian sponsored militias form a joint alliance, the carrot of Saudi funding would cease.

​Fast forward two months, exactly what Americans forbade materialised — an alliance — binding incumbent prime minister Abadi with suspect militia parties, Badr, Kata’ib junud al Imam Ali and Kata’ib Hezbollah, to name a few. Taking ‘victory’ as its chosen name, failure was its only destiny, faltering a day after its formation.

Disapproval from Abadi’s backers in Riyadh and Washington, some suspect, may have allowed Abadi to be swayed in a new direction, fearing retributive policies and the economic blowback this would have for him and his country. Reactions were split, some feigning surprise while others shunned the latter, accusing them of misplaced outrage.

Before they soured, relations between Iraq and Poland were once cordial. The common ground their socialist orientation allowed for was upended fifteen years ago by Warsaw’s unhesitant and unrepentant decision to endorse America’s war on Iraq as one out of a 30 member, American-led, coalition. The policy choice demanded more than moral backing.

​The then newly-admitted European Union (EU) member went on to command a 9000 strong multinational force that it had contributed 2500 of its own soldiers to. That’s not all. Despite Poles own history of foreign encroachment that has long tormented its people, Poland took up its residency in Baghdad as an occupant force, administering one of four “security sectors” in Baghdad.

“For our freedom and yours” -- Za naszą i waszą wolność -- was the ideological springboard that brought Poland back to Iraq. They were not there to construct infrastructure as they had in the late 60s and 70s, but rather to occupy. Standing idly by was not a choice.

​In the lead up to the offensive, President Aleksandr Kwasniewski told the New York Times that “we are more sensitive”, understanding “what it means not to act in the face of a threat” -- with reference to Europe’s policy of appeasement towards Adolf Hitler.

Yet as the war grinded on, Kwasniewski’s unapologetic tone turned remorseful, confessing to French reporters that Poland has been misled, after the myth of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) was laid bare to spectators worldwide.

The Canadian embassy in Iraq, Andrew Turner, revealed on Monday that it has opened a special visa office in Baghdad, noting that his country has initiated the implementation of the decision to grant Iraq a loan of 200 million dollars and the allocation of humanitarian aid to stabilize the situation, Dollars.

Turner denied in an interview that there were Canadian troops on Iraqi soil except for five police officers as trainers, who would be reinforced by 20 officers to prepare for the delivery of military support to the police.​He noted that Canada stands by a unified democratic Iraq and its commitment to Baghdad’s decision to stop military aid from the Peshmerga forces at the moment.

Iraqi forces on Nov. 4, 2017 after capturing the town of al Qaim from the Islamic State. (Ahmad al-Rubaye/AFP/Getty Images)

With the liberation last November of Rawa and Qaim, two towns near the Syrian border, the Islamic State in Iraq appeared on the brink of defeat. The militant group had lost the last urban strongholds taken during its dramatic drive through Iraq in 2014, and with them the last slivers of territory it controlled in the country.

But an unreleased analysis presented at recent coalition meetings by the United Nations speaks to a much more complicated and fluid situation on the ground — one characterized by delicate humanitarian considerations and the real possibility of an Islamic State resurgence.

According to the U.N., five of the areas newly liberated from the group urgently require stabilization. “There is a risk that if we don’t stabilize these areas quickly, violent extremism might emerge again. The military gains that have been made against [the Islamic State] could be lost,” Lise Grande, head of the United Nations Development Programme in Iraq, told Foreign Policy.​The areas, centered around the group’s former strongholds in northern Iraq, demonstrate the wide array of issues facing the Iraqi government and its international allies as they attempt to channel stabilization funds to sensitive areas and clamp down on a rapidly evolving threat.